


Desert Rose

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Ripple Effect [1]
Category: Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star
Genre: runaways - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 13:13:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1819717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it starts: the clients walk into <i>Starwind and Hawking</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desert Rose

**Author's Note:**

> Additional tags to be added as they come up.

This is how it starts: the clients walk into _Starwind and Hawking_ wrapped up in matching nondescript _hide-in-the-city_ colorless blue-gray, the sort of shade the mind skips over whenever it sees it, like it's invisible. It's easily the next best thing to invisibility, at any rate. Easy to forget and hard enough to spot even when someone knows what they're looking for. 

 

Gene probably would have missed them himself, if he were anybody but who he is and he had been anywhere else; hunting bounties is basically the best possible way to train a person to look for weird things in strange spots, and it's not like the people are strolling leisurely down the street or anything, they're _sprinting to his door_ like their lives depend on it, covered head to toe in a _hundred-and-ten degree weather._ The taller of the two figures keeps looking over their shoulder like they're trying to watch for pursuit.

 

He's holding his companion's wrist when they get close enough to hit the door, and by then Gene's already got his gun out, just in case, because people don't run that way unless they're  _scared_ .

 

He can't tell if they themselves are carrying when Tall-- holding wrist and in the lead-- grabs hold of the door and yanks it open, sort of half-spinning half-shoving the other at Gene as he-- Gene thinks it's a he, at any rate-- spins in himself, hauls the door closed, and then goes down and braces his shoulder on the frame, holding the handle.

 

The windows rattle in a way he's damned sure isn't _normal_ by any means, and also damned sure wasn't caused by these two.

 

The shorter of the two flinches at the sound and digs their-- her?-- fingers into his shirt, and Gene is only holding them out of instinct because they ping not as harmless, necessarily, but because they seem like people in need.

 

He's pointing his gun at the door because shop-front windows rattling that way is just...

 

Fucking weird. It sings in his teeth like Tao magic.

 

The-- woman?-- continues to quiver into Gene's chest. Tall is still at the door. He's shaking, now, almost in time with the windows; Gene can see his teeth clinched, eyes screwed shut, and his muscles straining. It continues for a full two minutes. By that point the whole crew is there, the rattling has become loud to the point of painful, and his teeth ache.

 

Tall sags against the door. He's still holding the handle. It takes a painfully surreal moment for Gene to realize he was _holding it closed_.

 

The woman took the moment to turn away from Gene and kind of, sort of, fling herself at Tall. All but hit her knees and kissed the ground in front of him, and one hand dropped to her back, pulling her up close to him. Gene takes that as a cue to check on his crew.

 

Everyone's watching the windows, as he had expected. Jim had his hand-held computer, and he and Mel are not so unobtrusively half-hidden behind Suzuka. It's the spot that, privately, both Gene and Suzuka find them to be safest. Aisha--

 

Wasn't watching the windows after all, though her ears were clamped down tight to her head. If the windows had set him on edge, he was not the least bit envious of what they did to the Ctarl-Ctarl. He followed her attention back to the door, where the woman was helping her associate to his feet. Gene didn't put his Caster away, though he let it dip.

 

It's not polite for a businessman to point his gun in the face of potential clients. He's an Outlaw, but he's _broke_. Port fees are expensive. He likes his ship.

 

So.

 

“What the hell was _that_?”

 

Smooth, Gene.

 

The woman flinched closer to Tall. He shifted, watching Gene from beneath the hood as he maneuvered her behind him, putting himself in Gene's direct line of fire instead. He's... well. Tall. Gene's tall, especially for a human and even more especially for a space rat, born in Zero Gs like he assumes he was. There are taller _aliens_ , but he usually had to look down at most humans.

 

This guy has a couple inches on him. Though, considering the tense set of his shoulders, and the way he squares his jaw while looking at Gene, he can make a lot of  _educated guesses_ about the threat levels that would spook a guy that size. After a moment, he looked away. Gene could see his lips moving and had to strain to hear him, but it didn't help. His translator glitched.

 

After a moment, the woman responded, just as quiet. The translator continued to hiss static at him.

 

Finally, Tall reached up with his right hand and brushed his hood back.

 

He was.. human, Gene guessed. Or close enough that it didn't matter otherwise. Basically unremarkable, he supposed; a normal enough skin-tone, brown hair with a fringe that only exposed one green eye. The translator on his right ear dangled a teardrop, a sickly-pale green-white. That was easily the most identifying feature he had, assuming it was actually seen.

 

The thing was, Tall didn't actually _look_ like _anybody_.

 

He didn't look like he was an average person, but he didn't look like he was remarkable, either. He didn't look like a bounty, but he _could have been one_. He wasn't, or if he was it was recent; Gene stayed pretty up-to-date on who had prices on their heads, because it was usually good money. Still, he had that look about him, at any rate. Except he also looked like he could have been lost in a barely-populated street at the drop of a hat.

 

He could have been anyone. He could have been _no-_ one.

 

Gene was willing to put money on the second.

 

Oh, he was on record on some ship manifest coming on-planet. Probably. Though it was just as likely there were records that he had been _born_ on the planet. Somewhere. But anybody hunting for them would find them buried under several weeks worth of paperwork, if they found them at all. And digital copies would be up and ready whenever he needed to clear a check, but otherwise? Conveniently lost in computer crashes and waves of viruses, the moment he needed to make a clean get-away.

 

He wasn't a Pirate. And he was certainly not a straight-laced boot-licker.

 

Which made him an  _Outlaw_ .

 

Like Gene. And everyone else on his crew.

 

Well. Shit.

 

“This is _Starwind and Hawking_?”

 

“That's what the sign says.”

 

Tall pressed his lips together, considering how to phrase his next question, and Gene waited. There was an explanation forthcoming, eventually. “You are a galactic transportation company?”

 

“...yeah?”

 

  
  
“You protect your cargo?”

 

“Insurance companies get twitchy if we don't attempt it.” Gene was pretty sure he knew where this was going. But the windows weren't _currently_ rattling, so he was willing to play the stalling game--

 

“We require transportation to the planet Aglilles. You will be well-paid.”

 

Off to the side, Jim jumped into the conversation, asking  _how well_ . Tall replied with a number nearly six times what it would cost to book passage on a commercial ship. Gene was surprised; Outlaws didn't just throw around that kind of money for nothing. Hell, most Outlaws Gene had met didn't  _have_ that kind of money to play  _with_ .

 

His gaze drifted down to the woman, and then back to the windows. And then back again, as he remembered how tight her grip had been. Damned near bruising, and her nails had dug furrows through his shirt. She'd been terrified, every second those windows had moved.

 

If getting her to Aglilles meant she never had to cling to like that to Gene again, he was willing to do it for  _free_ .

 

This is how it starts: A man and a woman on the run step into  _Starwind and Hawking_ , and Gene agrees to play taxi.

**Author's Note:**

> _Guess who they are!_


End file.
